The world of webinars

A webinar is an online seminar that allows a presenter to show an audience what is on their computer screen, while giving them the opportunity to interact with the audience.

Fourth offers regular webinars as one of its ways of training. These are short courses covering specific areas of our solutions and are run by system experts. They are a convenient way of accessing training from the work place or even from home.

Fourth webinars are available for all of our customers and are completely free of charge.

Simply click a link and you are connected through Cisco WebEx. You'll be viewing the system experts' screen in real-time with the chance to ask questions throughout the session.


Frequently asked questions

David Heath,
Customer Success Team

Success story

Company of Cooks is a private and corporate catering company which was founded in 1996. They are responsible for the catering operations at a number of London visitor attractions including the Royal Parks, Kenwood House, the Imperial War Museum and the South Bank Centre.

A belief in menus that feature an honest approach, simplicity, seasonality and quality is incorporated with a passion for supporting independent regional growers and producers.

Our people

Hi, I'm Adrian Chalmers, Head of Projects and responsible for all project implementation teams for all Fourth products.

I have worked in hospitality of one sort or another since leaving school at 16 from where I trained as a Chef in the Army Catering Corps. Since then I have worked for various well known companies in a variety of roles including Harrods, Marks & Spencer, Forte Heritage and Posthouse Hotels and Monarch Airlines. My roles have spanned food safety management, product development, procurement and even buying the loo rolls for a fleet of aircraft!

I came into contact with star chef in 2004 working as a consultant to aid the sales and implementation process whilst it was still a small business and helped grow the product to where it is today. Following the acquisition by Fourth of star chef in 2010, I was invited to join the team at Fourth to help grow that business further.

Today, in my current role, my responsibilities are varied and often quite challenging. Apart from ensuring we deliver on our promises to our customers through the projects process, I am closely involved as part of the Executive Team in shaping the way the business operates and ensuring we become ever more efficient. I am very involved in managing the financial performance of the projects teams and of course, trying to look after the interests of all of the Project Managers. There will always be a bit of me that is one of the resident star chef gurus too.

No two days are ever the same and the challenges constant, but then, that is what keeps my role interesting and always gives me something new to focus on.

Get involved

Interested in sustainability for your business?

Monday 9th July, Zetter Hotel

Come and find out how Cubbitt House gained their three star champion status for all its venues, the highest ranking achievable in the SRA sustainability rating survey.

» Find out more

Training

Counting and entering stock workshop

Thursday 26th July 10am - Covent Garden, London

For those new to stock taking on fnb manager or still struggling why not come along to the Counting and Entering Stock Workshop. Success will be covering how to input your stock counts onto the system using best practice. Some top tips and a review of the numerous stock reports available will also be demonstrated during the session.

Best practice

When setting up a multiple employment for an employee, decide whether you want this employee to always be available on the other division or location's Rota.

If you do, then leave auto add to rota ticked and the employee will be available on both rotas for scheduling.

If the employee is only required occasionally, untick auto add to rota. The employee will now not automatically appear on the other divison or locations rota, but can be pulled into that rota on the necessary weeks through Add employee on the rota screen.

Top tips

people system

If employees work the same shifts every week, why not set them up as default in the employment details screen? This means every time a new rota is created, the employee will already be scheduled for their shifts.

fnb manager

When entering your stock into fnb manager, you can use the + and - keys within in the stock fields to calculate your totals. If you were to enter 4 + 2.8 + 3.7 and then press the Tab key, the system will total the calculation to 10.5 and move to the next stock field.

trade simple

Did you know you can create a market list from your basket? Once you have added all of your products to your basket click Save. Click onto Market list and select Create new. From the dropdown menu choose Select market list from current basket. You can then continue your order by going to Checkout and following the normal process.

star chef

star chef allows multiple users to collaborate and share information across their business. The Approvals and workflow feature allows star chef to mirror their real world business hierarchy. An approvals workflow can be configured at any time in a user's star chef system (with the help and guidance of the star chef team). Use approvals to:

• Approve additions and changes to ingredient, recipes and menus, therefore ensuring the integrity of the data added.
• Set up multiple authorisation workflows.
• Receive optional e-mail notification of items awaiting approval

Legal corner

The Beecroft Report on employment law reform

The Government was recently forced to publish a controversial report that contained a number of proposals regarding reforming employment law, after it was leaked to the press.

The report contains some potentially ground breaking employment law proposals such as introducing "no fault dismissals" whereby employers could dismiss employees, without giving a reason provided they pay compensation; amending the service provision elements of TUPE; and reducing consultation periods for collective redundancies to 30 days regardless of the number of employees at risk. Vince Cable allegedly has already labelled some proposals as "complete nonsense".

"The Report contains some potentially significant changes to employment law, but it remains to be seen how many of these controversial proposals will actually be adopted, especially as a number of them have been publicly criticised. In any event, it is probably fair to say the proposals are not ones that would see a radical change to the costs faced by businesses in dealing with the substantial burden of employment laws in the UK."

Liz Parkin,
Solicitor, Shoosmith

For further details, please read this article.

Fourth Hospitality is the leading provider of Software-as-a-Service solutions for the hospitality industry for core cost control of labour, payroll, stock and purchasing.